Today I would like to share a few links that I found to be particularly interesting this past week. Check em out and let me know what you think!
Facebook Home Page has a New Look
So there is now a News Feed and a Live Feed on the home page? Just like with most Facebook updates, the responses to the change have been mixed. What does it all mean? Why did Facebook make the change? Click the link above to find out. Just like with the last changes Facebook made – in the long run it is going to make Facebook even better and more organized!
2009 Masters of Business Online Summary from Douglas Karr
If you are involved in the Indianapolis, Indiana social media scene, you were likely exposed to all of the buzz that came along with the Masters of Business Online. Landing pages, online video, search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and social media – these were just some of the topics covered at this great event. Get an inside look at what took place during the event from Douglas Karr by clicking on the link above.
Thank Goodness It’s Monday
One of my favorite people to follow online is Scott Stratten, President of Un-Marketing.com. On Friday I was checking out his new initiative, Thank Goodness It’s Monday and I just had to share. It’s a great concept: stop letting the day of the week determine your attitude. Embrace each day and make the most of it. Scott is forming a group of people he calls the” 1%” that refuse to fall into the “TGIF” mentality. Click the link above to check out his video on why he’s doing this. If you like what he has to say, enter your email address to get signed up. He will follow-up immediately, as always, with an email welcoming you to the “1%.”
I have been using my Gmail account recently for professional use and not use personal use. One of the things that I seemed to be missing was a nice looking, custom HTML signature. Sure, I had my name and basic contact info, but that just wasn’t cutting it. I needed something more appealing. Every communication is an opportunity for someone to connect with me via social media or to check out our company’s Web site and I no longer wanted to miss these opportunities. I did preliminary searches and found that several Gmail users were also frustrated with the inability to add a nice looking HTML signature. I knew something had to be out there and I became determined to find the best solution.
I first ran across a Firefox plugin called Blank Canvas. The plugin allowed for custom HTML signatures in Gmail. Just what I was wanting! Right? Wrong. Like many other HTML editors it was not user friendly. My signature did not display as I wanted and it was just a pain to use. There had to be something that was user friendly that could generate a stunning signature.
Ironically enough at that very time, I also had my Google Reader open and ran across a Hubspot Blog post about simple branding opportunities that cannot be overlooked. Sure enough, in the first paragraph was a link to another Firefox plugin for email signatures called WiseStamp. WiseStamp allows you to create very professional and creative email signatures for Gmail, AOL Mail, Yahoo! Mail, and Hotmail. Best of all it’s simple to use! It takes about 2 minutes to get your signature setup and there are even several email signature templates set up to choose from. Adding your social networking links is a breeze! Just enter the URL and the icons are taken care of automatically. This email signature tool even allows you to share your latest blog post via a link in your email signature automatically.
I would recommend taking a few minutes to set up an email signature via WiseStamp right now if you are using Gmail, AOL mail, Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail. Take advantage of this simple, but often overlooked branding opportunity.
When was the last time you read a review of a product or business online? Did this review influence your final purchasing decision in any way?
Coming up ranked #1 in a local business Google search is great. It can mean more phone calls and more online leads resulting in more business. Or it can work against you.
Still being relatively new to the Fishers area I was searching online for a local medical doctor to visit. I will not mention any names or the particular type of doctor I was seeking. The first place I went, as always, was to Google. I did a Google search for this type of doctor – local search results and the continued #1 organic listing underneath both turned the same doctor’s office. I checked out the Web site, determined this would be a good place to start…but wait…I went back to the results page and noticed there were also 6 reviews of this particular doctor/medical practice. I went on to read all 6 reviews. They were horrible. 6 different people provided “one star” reviews and stated they would NEVER visit that particular doctor again. In their reviews, they cited everything from waiting hours to get in to see the actual doctor, to the doctor making them feel so bad that they left in tears.
Now it’s hard to say if all of these negative reviews were 100% authentic, but the fact that there were 6 of them with descriptive encounters was enough to influence my decision to continue looking for someone else. The sad thing is that this same turn of events is happening for a lot of businesses that are spending money and working so hard to rank high in Google search. What is even more sad is that most have them have no idea, or if they do, they are doing nothing about it.
Kevin Hood wrote a great blog post about the impact of a review he saw online while searching for a place to purchase a tailored suit in The Internet Reflects Your Business. While he stated that the likelihood of someone leaving a negative review is probably higher than someone leaving a positive review…the bottom line is the negative reviews still influenced his purchasing decision.
Think if this particular doctor’s offered a free service or 25% discount to 50 of its best patients just for doing an online review. By targeting your best patients, most of the reviews would be positive. 50 positive reviews vs. only 6 negative reviews certainly makes coming up #1 in Google even more powerful.
What do you think of this idea? How much do you weigh online reviews into your purchasing decisions?
Why did you start a blog? Why should I start a blog?
I have been getting these two questions a lot lately as my blog continues to develop. There are a lot of valid reasons why you should start a blog, but just remember a blog should be something that you WANT to do. It may take a little convincing from some friends or co-workers to finally quit talking about it and actually do it. A blog is not for everyone and it should not be something that is FORCED or something that you are not ready to make a commitment to. Having said that, If you do decide to start a blog I believe you will find it to be a very rewarding experience.
Watch the video above to see why I started a blog and read more on some of the reasons on why you may want to think about creating your own blog. There are many more than I could list…trust me.
Through blogging you learn about new things
Learning can be a great experience and a blog enables you to learn a lot about not only the online community, but other topics you might be blogging about. It is natural to want to make your blog the best it can be which forces you to learn about things you do not know and more about things you may already know. It is also very fun learning. Why? Because you get to share something you learned with the rest of your online community. And then the best part- you begin getting feedback. Mostly positive, though you will have a few negative posts as well. You will also have posts of other people talking about similar topics that interest you. Time to go check out those posts and learn even more. All at once you have this cycle developing and you are learning new things every day while having fun doing it.
Blogging is low cost and helps create YOUR brand
What better way to get your name and expertise out to a large amount of people than blogging? Blogging is a great way to help you not only strengthen your company’s brand- but YOUR brand. It enables you to establish yourself in the online community as someone who is knowledgeable about a particular topic or topics. Suddenly you become an expert in your own niche. Then people began to trust you and the next thing you know you have developed followers or a Tribe or even Sneezers (as Seth Godin would say). This allows you to spread your name while developing contacts and quality relationships with those followers. Just like the traditional definition of networking, this can lead to great business opportunities as well as person opportunities.
All of this great exposure and endless potential opportunities and how much money does it cost you – not much at all. In fact, you can create a WordPress blog for free right now. It will take you about 5 minutes to get started.
Blogging enables you to quickly produce content resulting in SEO and ROI Content is king on the web. Search engines are all about fresh, changing relevant content. A blog delivers that content that search engines are after. It makes Google happy. This means your site gets more traffic. Not just traffic, but qualified traffic. With qualified traffic leads are generated. With leads come sales. Sales=money. Money = good = you stay in business. You don’t have to take my word for it. Check out some of the benefits of blogging according to Compendium Blogware.
Blogging helps people This is by far the most surprising and rewarding aspect of my blogging experience so far. I can tell through comments and other interaction that I have been able to help people. Even if it is something as small as telling them why they should or should not buy a particular cell phone, go see a certain movie; or even if it is something as trivial as helping them customize their Facebook or Twitter experience. In some way, I know that I have helped them. I don’t care who you are- helping people (even if it is someone you barely know) is one of the most rewarding experiences in life.
Final Reason: Blogging is fun. Try it. I think you will agree.
Well, here we are in 2009. We have survived another year and are in the midst of an economic recession. As with any new year, a lot of people are looking back on 2008 and setting their goals for 2009.
Setting goals is a very easy thing to do. A goal can be anything from trying to double the amount of revenue your business generates to simply blogging more frequently on your personal blog at home. Goals are a great thing for everyone on any level…it gives us something to look forward to, something to attain, something to provide us with a sense of accomplishment. So why do many people look back on their goals year after year with a feeling of bewilderment trying to figure out what went wrong?
The thing that many people forget is that setting a goal and putting a plan in place to achieve that goal are two totally different things. Goals require one big thing that many of us are unwilling to grasp: A change in your current lifestyle. You are not going to get to where you want to go by continuing to live the way you are now. This is where people most often will break down because it is very difficult to make that change and break out of your comfort zone.
The below scenario is a perfect example on two different ways to set goals:
Say we have two people with very similar physical characteristics who both want to lose 20 lbs in 2 months.
The first person’s plan to achieve that goal is to eat less food and exercise more frequently. Pretty good plan, right? Wrong.
The second person’s plan is to exercise at a local YMCA on Monday, Wednesday and Friday directly following work from 5:30-6:30 each of those days. They are going to eliminate all soda and fast food consumption.
Which person is more likely to be successful in achieving their goals? If you said the second person, you were correct!
Why? Because the second person took the initiative to put a plan in place. While that plan was not as detailed as it could have been say if they had actually put together the work out plan or planned each of their meals for the week, it still involved a plan for a specific lifestyle change.
It can be very easy to say you are going to do a lot of things, but it is those who actually put the plan in place and change their lifestyle that will be successful. Please remember when setting your goals to spend as much or more time developing your plan to achieve those goals as you spent coming up with them. If you make the necessary lifestyle change, in 2010 you will look back on 2009 with a great sense of accomplishment.
This week I had the opportunity to have Justin Bryant sit in as a guest blogger. Watch the video as Justin discusses the importance of branding yourself in 2009. Check out Justin’s blog.
The Gmail design update is very welcomed as many people have unofficially tried to take the initiative on their own to spice up the previously very plain design. There are over 30 new themes to pick from so everyone is sure to find something they will like. There are even seasonal themes that change automatically as the season changes throughout the year or a weather theme that rains on your email. How cool is that? This offers yet another reason for Gmail to stay in Beta…LOL
The SearchWiki integration with Google allows you to edit and customize your search results, but only after you have logged into your Google account. You may add notes and comments to each search result for future reference. This new feature also gives you the ability to promote and remove certain search results depending on if you find the information helpful. The promotions, deletions and comments of search results will not affect other individual’s search experience but will enable your results to be easily managed.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think about these 2 new Google updates!
Posted by derekmcclain 
I first ran across a Firefox plugin called 
